Her expression turned dark with suspicion. “Mom’s just jealous because Ramon is interested in me and not her. Not that he would be, since she’s pregnant. And ten years older than him.” She emphasized the age difference as if it were centuries. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s perfect in every way.”
“Well, there’s perfect, and then there’s perfect,” I said, calculating the likelihood of Britt coming willingly with me. With Lucy close to term, I’d promised to do everything in my power to get Britt away from the dubious Ramon, but I had a feeling it was going to be a more difficult project than I’d first imagined. “From what Mac found out via one of her contacts on the Dark Web, Ramon is actually heading up a program with a pretty heinous purpose—in a word, torture.”
“Oh, that,” she said with a snort, moving away from the still-open door to stand in front of me, her arms crossed, her expression still pugnacious. I glanced at the door, wanting badly to close it just in case someone strolled by, but didn’t see how I could do that without her raising a fuss. “It’s just the leeches he’s doing that to.”
“Leeches?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah, leeches. You know.” She made a sharp, undefinable gesture. “The bloodsuckers. Vampires. Only Ramon says they’re really not. He called them something else, but I forgot what. He says they’re vampire ancestors, and they were all gone, but then his boss found one who was dead, and he took some DNA or something from him, and found a vamp, and made a new one. The not-vampire guys, that is. So, it’s not like it’s real torture, because the vampire is evil and shit like that.”
My blood ran cold in my veins. Words came to mind, ones that seemed to be wrapped in a miasma of darkness. “Not vampires ... Dark Ones.”
“Yeah, that’s the name of the vampire before he was turned into a ... Thrall, I think, is what Ramon said was the name. Ramon works in the lab. Right now he’s just doing whatever the chemist dudes tell him, but one day he’s going to take over the lab,” she said with lofty disregard of just how juvenile she sounded. “He’s smart and sexy, and he told me I could live here with him so we can be together, and when he goes back to San Francisco, where his boss works, I get to go with him. So if that’s the only thing you’ve got against him, you can just go back to Mom and tell her that she’s way off base, as usual. Thralls are evil. Ramon is just trying to save us from them.”
I was distracted by a sense of something in my head bumping around in the shadows of my awareness. I tried to pull it forward into the light, but the memory—assuming that was what it was—continued to rattle around just out of my mental reach. “That doesn’t really make sense,” I said slowly, letting go of the elusive memory.
“Did you hear me?” Britt was closer now, her hands on her hips. “I said you can go. Ramon and I are in love. He’s going to marry me. We’re going to have a house in California, and I will get an agent and become an actress. Or maybe a dancer. Ramon says I dance really good.”
“That sounds like a fun plan, but your mom is worried about you, and I think you and she should talk about this before you go off to get married to this torturing dude.” I stood up and took her by the arm. A glance at the clock half-buried beneath a crop top told me that I wouldn’t have time to convince her to go with me. I’d just have to risk blipping us out to the road, praying that I could take her with me. Damn, I should have tried this with Mac ahead of time, but I didn’t have that option now. I’d just have to trust I could do it. “I’m sure you two can work out an agreement. But right now, if you would just stand here next to me for a few seconds while I clear my mind—”
A few moments later I realized I had underestimated Britt. She jerked her arm out of my grip and ran to the door, yelling for guards. I hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether I should just grab her and try to get her all the way to the side of the road, or leave her and report to one of my oldest friends that her daughter was a lost cause, but before I could decide, two men and a woman ran into the room, weapons drawn. Britt stood behind them in the hallway, a smug smile curving her lips.
“Your mother is not going to be happy about this,” I told her when the guards, after hearing Britt tell them I wasn’t an employee of Krebbs, and was there to kidnap her, marched me past her and out the front door.
She rolled her eyes, but managed to refrain from saying anything.
The next half hour was painful, at least from a tedium standpoint. I was grilled repeatedly as to my identity and reason for infiltrating the Krebbs facility, both questions of which I answered truthfully.
They didn’t believe me.
“Look, this is ridiculous,” I said, glancing at the clock on a nearby wall. “We’ve been here for thirty-three minutes, and we’re just going around in circles. I’ve told you my name and the reason I’m here—to rescue a friend’s nineteen-year-old daughter. I do not work for any government. I am not an industrial spy. I operate a sightseeing tour, that’s all.”
“And your family?” the male Men in Black asked, leaning against the wall.
I shrugged. “I’m an only child, and my nearest relative lives in Alaska. Why do you want to know?”
“Just checking if there is someone we should notify as to your whereabouts.” He glanced toward the woman MIB, who stood next to the table.
Feeling a best defense was an offense, I said, “Oh, I have friends who know I’m here.”
“Local friends?” the man asked.
“Yes,” I said slowly, wondering why they wanted to know. “Regardless of that, you can see that it was just a pure fluke that I happened to get through the gate without anyone seeing me.”
“That is impossible,” he said. “Our perimeter is monitored.”
I shrugged, and smiled. “Not that well if I strolled in without anyone seeing me. What say we call it good and I go on my way, and you can fill in a report to the head mucky-mucks telling them that one of their employees is seducing nineteen-year-old girls.”
I admit my attitude was flip almost to the point of being rude, but I was riding high on a cloud of self-confidence. After all, I was the possessor of a magical ability that, while still mostly unknown to me, was pretty darned impressive. If these goons thought they could confine me in this building, they were sorely mistaken. All I had to do was focus my mind, and I’d blip away, leaving them scratching their heads at the amazing disappearing woman. Those and other such thoughts kept me relatively calm despite the situation, and I was able to look upon the MIB interviewing me with almost a clinical interest.
The man in question gave me a sour look and turned his back on me to consult with his partner, a tall woman with tribal tattoos peeking out of her shirt collar. She had an Australian accent, and although I couldn’t see her eyes, she exuded a hair more warmth than her colleague.
I squirmed on the hard wooden chair that I’d been more or less forced onto, and wondered what the two MIBs—not to mention the ones who I had no doubt were watching through a large mirrored window located directly across from me—would do if I suddenly blipped out of the room.
“You will tell us the truth, and then possibly we will discuss letting you leave,” the female MIB said, moving around to face me. She took a seat on the other side of the metal table that sat in front of me, bolted, I couldn’t help but notice, to the floor. Suddenly, the woman took off her shades, and gave me a warm smile. “I know this seems like a frightful nuisance, but you have to understand our point of view—we have had a security breach, and it’s in our best interests to find out how and why that breach was made. I’m sure you won’t mind helping us figure all that out.”